[#GADGETS] How to control USB Email Notifier with C# (I)

Buenas,

showed yesterday on the talk of robotics at the University such as connecting a USB device and start playing with it to see if we can do something using C#. For the demo used a gadget like this USB Email Notifier (link) which sold over the internet to only us$ s:8, 68 (including shipment costs).

This USB HUB comes with a special software that makes the envelope to change color from certain events. For example: check our mailbox and when a new mail arrives because it turns a red led inside the same.

The goal of this post is to show how to create a class C# to turn off the light to our liking. The first thing we need to do is identify the device HID as explained in this post. To do this use theSimpleHIDWrite tool (download from here). With it we can see information relating to all USB devices that we have connected to our computer. For example:

Our device is called “DDD Mail Notifier”. If we accede to the information of the device we will see a few important details:

Vendor name: “DDD Mail Notifier”
Product name: “DDD Mail Notifier”
Input Buffer: 9 Bytes
Input Buffer: 6 Bytes

If we return to the main form, we will see the 6-byte buffer is rendered dynamically with 6 boxes of text in the form. So now we have to see that data are that we need to send to be able to turn on the light.

If we introduce the following information